Right Vs Left hand Navigation - March 26th, 2008

Traditionally websites have had their navigation on the left hand side but with the introduction of blogs and new web 2.0 sites we have seen a shift towards right hand side navigation. This change in direction has left the question of which navigation position works best left or right?

The answer to this question is at present unclear and many leave the decision down to personal preference. There is little evidence to support either approach but some industry experts have raised some interesting points. For example some believe that navigation should always be placed on the left hand side as we read English from left to right. They think that by having the navigation there would make it easier for our brains to process the information and patterns on the page. Others have raised the question of cultural differences. Do people in other countries perceive navigation differently? It maybe more natural for people in Egypt for example to use right hand navigation.

At Just Search we believe that the type of site should influence the navigation side. If you have a blog for example the emphasis is on content so the content is should be kept to the left while the navigation should be on the right. An ecommerce system is different as you want users to click on links to get to different products so it may therefore be quicker to have the navigation on the left hand side.

Although it is difficult to determine which navigation method is more effective there are a few important points to consider when designing navigation.

Link text should be clear, concise and link to appropriate places within a website.

Links of high importance should be placed towards the top of navigational the list.

Navigation should be easy to use and work across all browsers.

Use colours that do not contract and make it difficult to read.

Top navigation is also important. Most sites use top navigation in conjunction with a left or right hand side navigation bar. The most important links or general category links are usually put in the top navigation. Blending the two navigation bars can really improve the usability of your site. So before you start designing your navigation system consider the pros and cons of each approach and look at the type of site you have.

Mark

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Simple Page Structure - March 20th, 2008

Web design has come along quite a lot in the past 6 / 7 years. In the past there was very little consideration for web standards and methods of constructing pages were very different.

You may still see it now when you look round the internet but many people used to use tables to lay out there websites. Before Css became standard tables provided a way of setting out the layout of your website and it positioned elements on you page. For me personally i found it all quite confusing and frustrating but if you worked at it long enough it worked.

However thankfully our techniques developed into the expected standards we have today. As you may know we now use Div tags and Css for positioning elements on the page. We have now done this because tables were only ever really designed to display table elements on the page and not be relied on for positioning the whole page.

With Divs and Css the freedom and power you have to design more freely is clear to see with the appearance of better designed and better looking websites. A Div tag can be manipulated in many ways to create your design and with the imminent arrival of Css 3 this is only set to get better.

Divs are the standard that has been set out by web standard authorities as they provide cleaner slick code than tables ever did which in return provides smaller file sizes and quicker download speeds.

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